Scarlet Guard

Long has the Celestial Host been associated with order throughout the empire. Adherents of the Celestial Host are trusted members of their communities and travelling adherents receive a level of respect and reverence connected to their position. This reputation and service role are important to the church and something they have fought very hard to maintain; but adherents are still only people, prone to mistakes and errors of judgement. From the church of Murkas, the Scarlet Guard was born. Originally the guard was created to deal with issues that had cropped up amongst the adherents, and they became very good at routing out those issues and dealing with them discreetly and definitively. Over time, their scope expanded until they were in charge of seeking out and ending acts of heresy within the church.

The Celestial Host is by far the most influential religion in the empire, and the Scarlet Guard know it. They have often applied pressure, especially in Ashland, but across the empire, to create laws that grant them authority and enable their techniques for searching out heretics. Largely they have been successful, though they have had the least reach into the Varina. They were making great progress there, reforming many of the less desirable cultural touchstones of Varina, when the enlightening started to gain prominence. Its existence threatened the Scarlet Guard significantly, and they have been very focused on trying to stomp the idea out.